It’s the weekend after Halloween, but today is the final day for costume contest entries! Send a pic of your costume with the subject “Halloween Costume Contest” to [email protected] to enter!

END SECOND ANNUAL CORPSE RUN COSTUME CONTEST UPDATE!

LIVESTREAM UPDATE:

The next livestream will be this Firday, November 8th at 9pm est! That is all!

END LIVESTREAM UPDATE!

Concerning today’s strip, I get the feeling that I’m not alone in my disappointment with the end of Pokemon games. When I was a kid and beat the Elite Four for the first time, I thought the game was over.

As we all know, it wasn’t. There was still one more challenge: beat the guy who beat the Elite Four… your rival.

The idea that a victorious challenger would now be a part of the gauntlet for future trainers carried a lot of narrative implications. Maybe there wasn’t always an Elite Four to determine a league champ. Maybe there was just Lorelei, who was eventually beaten by Bruno. The next challenger would have to go through them both to be declared champ. Eventually, Agatha managed to do that. Then Lance beat all three, and so on.

I though that beating Oak’s grandson would, in addition to being the reining champ, put me as the final obstacle for the league championship.

Naturally, I was disappointed to learn that this was not the case, nor has it been in any of the Pokemon games I’ve played (Red/Blue, Black/White, X/Y).

How great of a feature would it be when after becoming the league champ, you got to design your own battle chamber and every time you go there, you take on a new challenger looking to become the new king of the Pokemon world?

Maybe the challengers would be folks you battled along the road during your journey… maybe your in game friends have been training hard and could pull you from the throne… maybe old gym leaders are looking to get back into the limelight… maybe an Elite Four member wants to be back on top…

This sounds like a “good on paper; poor in execution” concepts. It’s neat if they allowed such a function, but then you start to wonder:

1. Given the fact that you’re the person being challenged, are you bound by the same rules that the NPCs are (limited healing, Set only party conditions)?

2. How strong would the challenging teams be? Surely, they would have to be of equal or higher levels. Would your pokemon gain levels during this time? Also, since you mentioned about bypassing players, what if the game picks out a challenge team of 6 Lv. 100 Arceus? Someone out there probably has this team just for kicks.

3. What happens when you lose? Do you “white out” and lose half your money? Does the victorious winner become your game’s new champion with the team they beat you with?

So I dunno. I think that while it is an interesting idea, executing it wouldn’t go over so well.